The wreckage of a passenger plane carrying 22 people that crashed in Nepal has been found, officials say. The Tara Air Twin Otter plane took off on Wednesday from Lamidanda Airport, 162 km (101 miles) east of Kathmandu and was heading to the capital.
The wreckage was found on a hillside in the Himalayan foothills.
The head of the rescue operation said the aircraft had "smashed into pieces on impact and there are unlikely to be any survivors".
"The plane that went missing on Wednesday has been found crashed into a hillside in eastern Nepal," the chief rescue official, Dimlesh Lal Karna, told AFP news agency.
The plane was found early on Thursday after the search resumed at first light.
The operation had been suspended later on Wednesday due to heavy cloud cover and fading light.
The plane was carrying 19 passengers and three crew. Tara Air said one of the passengers was an American citizen while the rest were believed to be Nepalese citizens, all whom were returning from a pilgrimage to a Hindu temple.
Aviation accidents are not uncommon in mountainous Nepal.
In August, a plane heading for the Everest region crashed in bad weather killing all 14 people on board, including four Americans, a Japanese national and a British national.